Monthly Archives: March 2018

Assemble your team and propose your city as host for the next OpenStreetmap conference. The State of the Map working group helps you. We encourage you to contact us on team@stateofthemap.org as early as possible so that we can provide guidance if required.

We passed a milestone recently which deserves some celebration: OpenStreetMap has now reached 1 million map contributors. Over the lifetime of our project, 1,000,000 different users have created a user account and made edits to the map! 1 million is a big number, and the growth of our community continues apace.

“At its core, OpenStreetMap is all about humans sharing knowledge about the places they visit, live and work in. Our fantastic project is only possible thanks to over a million individuals who generously volunteer their time to help others find their way in the world.”Peter Barth – OSMF board

If you haven’t tried contributing to OpenStreetMap yet, it’s not too late to join a million others! sign up today and map your neighbourhood!

You may remember we celebrated 1 million users way back in 2013, but that was the count of signed up users — an impressive number, but not everyone who signed up has yet contributed to the map (Why have users signed up but not contributed? The reasons for this have been described in variousways over the years but similar participation patterns are seen in many online communities)

Simon Poole has been crunching the changeset logs and watching the count of map contributors tick past 1 million:

Are you a student who likes to code? Google Summer of Code offers you the opportunity to spend a couple of months contributing to an open source software project – such as OpenStreetMap – and get paid for it!

In 2018, OpenStreetMap has been selected again as a mentoring organization by Google, continuing ten years of GSoC experience with many successful participants. Our project ideas page lists a variety of possible tasks which use a broad range of programming languages and technology stacks, and cover topics ranging from API development to 3D rendering to public transport. Plus, you’re not limited to that list of suggestions, so if you’d like to contribute to a project from the OSM ecosystem that’s not listed there, feel free to discuss it with us!

Interested? Read up on how to work with us and get in contact with possible mentors and the OSM community as early as possible. Our recommendation is to join the #osm-gsoc IRC channel or post to our developers’ mailing list to introduce yourself and talk about what you want to work on. This year’s application period opens March 12th, start your preparations early to put together a great submission!

Community voting for State of the Map 2018 is now open! Inspired by the community that makes OpenStreetMap a reality we want your help in shaping this year’s program.

The People Speak! by saulalbert. Licence: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Thank you everyone for submitting session proposals for State of the Map 2018. We have a great line up of presentations this year, it is time to share your views and help shape the State of the Map 2018 program.

Please participate in our OpenStreetMap community survey. It’s open to all, whether you are planning a trip to Milan, attending virtually on the live streams, or just enjoying our session videos afterwards.

Once past the front page you will be presented with a long list of talks to rate, sorted at random. We don’t expect you to rate all 134 talks; if each person reading this just did 10 then we would end up with a large amount of valuable data. When you’ve got as far as you’d like, just scroll down, hit Next until you can Submit your answers. Just don’t leave the page open for too long, as your session might time out. Note: Use of OSM usernames helps us with spam detection – we won’t share them with anyone.

You matter in the creation of OpenStreetMap and we want your voice to be heard in the creation of its conference. The survey is only open until 20th March 2018, so go to the survey now!

The State of the Map (SotM) conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap. Organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation it has been held each year since 2007 (except 2015). State of the Map 2018 will take place in Milan (July 28 – 30, 2018).

The OpenStreetMap magnifying glass logo. One of the marks covered by the new trademarks policy

Why does OpenStreetMap have marks?

The OpenStreetMap marks represent OpenStreetMap and its work to bring open map data to the entire world. When users see the OpenStreetMap name and logo, they should be confident that they are looking at a high quality map that is the result of the rigorous and comprehensive collaboration process of OpenStreetMap. Trademark protection helps reinforce that connection.

What are the goals of this trademark policy?

The goodwill supporting the OpenStreetMap marks has been generated by a prolific and passionate volunteer community. The OpenStreetMap Foundation has prepared this policy to preserve and protect that goodwill by ensuring that uses of the marks are consistent with OpenStreetMap’s mission and promote the OpenStreetMap movement.

How is this trademark policy different from most trademark policies?

This trademark policy seeks to make trademark licensing as easy as possible for the contributors who created OpenStreetMap, by making explicit that many uses do not require a trademark licence, and by empowering them to use OpenStreetMap’s marks without a trademark licence for community-focused events and outreach work. The OpenStreetMap Foundation hopes that this helps spread OpenStreetMap and encourage contribution while also ensuring that the mark remains a reliable signal of quality.

The updated Trademark Policy has information on:

How to use the OSM marks

When you may use the OSM marks without asking us

Special uses that require permission

Prohibited uses

Unauthorised use

Some of the updates:

Offer to register domain names for informal local groups

The OpenStreetMap Foundation now offers to register domain names for informal local groups. Once a domain has been registered, it will point to the groups website as long as the terms of the trademark policy are followed and this can be done without causing conflicts with other user groups. Please note that this is intended for informal local groups, not Local Chapters. Please read the Trademark Policy for more details.

Events and conferences

Please read the Trademark Policy if you are interested in organising an OpenStreetMap related event or Conference.

Questions?

If you are not sure whether your use is in compliance with this policy or local trademark laws please don’t hesitate to contact OSMF at trademarks@osmfoundation.org

The Licencing Working Group is one of the seven volunteer Working Groups of the OSM Foundation, focused on the promotion of open geospatial data through practical, coherent and clear licensing. If you find that interesting we invite you to join us – just mail us at legal@osmfoundation.org